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HI all
Carni's and Italians do well here in vermont. When feeding over the inner cover with Qt. jars I cut 4" x3/8x1" pices of wood and place these onder the edges of the jar lid. This keps the jar up high enough for the bees to get at and allows the center hole to be kept open and can be covered with one deep.It also allows more than one jar without cutting more holes in the inner cover. I tried russian Queens in my first year of beekeeping and found them to be swarmy (maybe that was just my inexperience).good beekeeping stuart

My 2 pure Russian AI queens never built up past a single deep.The daughter queens crossed with our mix of Italians and Carns were better but very swarmy.I used some of their daughters for some splits and they were even better,but are no longer Russians,just hybrids with Russian influence.Some of these are a bit on the nervous side,but nothing vicious.

Bullseye Bill, thanks for relaying the Weaver's report of what they think of their bees. So it was B. Weaver, not his brother?

Can others confirm the All-American as being good?

On another note, it sure seems funny to me that Russian bees from north of northern Japan, near Manchuria, would have wintering-over troubles, but I guess they spent a few generations in the research facility in Louisiana before release to the rest of the US. Maybe some inadvertent selection for problematic characteristics happened by accident.

Brian Cady

PS. Say, BulleyeBill, you know you can go back and edit your own message by clicking on the pencil-and-paper icon above it. BC

Brian,
Yes I did know that, and I do on occasion, but we were past that posting before it was pointed out to me (via e-mail) that I stated the wrong Weaver. So that no one else might miss the correction, I re-posted the correction at the end of the thread.
Thanks, Bill

I've been buying from Weaver since they were just Weaver's and not R. and B. But then I was buying from B. Weaver. I've had their Buckfasts and All Americans and both were excellent. They have always given good service and only once did I ever get a drone layer which they promptly replaced.

The only problems I've had, we've gone over before, and that was summer before last when all of my buckfast hives swarmed in a drought and turned vicious.

Don't forget the old stand by smoker. Sugar syrup is fine most of the time but the smoker is much more effective in the long run especially if you got many colonies to work through and will end up angering alot of bees.

i got some all american and buckfastlast fall. The all american seem to go through much more feed than the buckfast just my opinion (they are from b weaver)
I have one buckfast from R weaver and it is great. i bought the other queens from B because they are suposed to have more mite resistance in their genes.

I started six hives last year with a mixture of different races of bees (Carniolan, Cordovan Italian, and pure Italian). One of the problems that I had was a lack of drawn foundation. This limits some of the manipulations that you can do.

For quick buildup (and from admittedly limited experience) I don't think that you can beat the Italians. They drew more foundation quicker than any of the other races of bees that I had last year. So much so that I was stealing frames of drawn foundation from the Italians and giving them to the other hives to ensure that they were all equal. Each time I did this, the Italians would quickly build drawn foundation on the new frames that I threw into the hive. This same philosophy worked on honey supers.

Therefore, I would recommend that you get the Italians, get an inventory of drawn foundation, and then requeen (in the fall or early spring) with the ones that you believe you need for the other factors that have been mentioned.

Another advantage is that it is much easier to find Italian Package Bees (and thus the quality should be better) at this time of the year.